Emergency contraception

Emergency contraception is a specific birth control pill that may prevent pregnancy after unprotected intercourse. Emergency contraception is intended for occasional use as the word "emergency" implies. Emergency Contraception Pills are often referred as ECP's or EC's. The pill is commonly named Morning-after pill‎ because it is actually taken after intercourse.

Questions we could ask ourselves

How Does Emergency Contraception Work?

The role of emergency contraceptive pills (also called "morning after pills" or "day after pills") is to delay ovulation (the time in a woman's cycle when her ovaries release an egg).

If you take emergency contraceptive pills before fertilization (the point when the egg and sperm meet), they may interfere with the process of fertilizing the egg, for instance making it harder for the egg or the sperm to travel (and meet up) in your reproductive tract. It’s also possible that emergency contraceptive pills work after fertilization, making it impossible for the fertilized egg to implant in the uterus.

Concerning the Intra Uterine Device, it does not affect ovulation, but like emergency contraceptive pills, it can prevent sperm from fertilizing an egg. It may also prevent implantation of a fertilized egg.

Emergency contraceptive pills are not the same as the abortion pill. There is no time when emergency contraception would end a pregnancy once it has started. Emergency contraceptive pills don’t have any effect if you are already pregnant. If you decide to have use an IUD for emergency contraception, your health care provider would test you first to confirm you are not already pregnant.

What is Plan B?

Plan B is the name for the only progestin-only, sold in the United States, emergency contraceptive pill.

Does emergency contraception cause an abortion ?

No, using emergency contraceptive pills (also called "morning after pills" or "day after pills") prevents pregnancy after sex. It does not cause an abortion. (In fact, because emergency contraception helps women avoid getting pregnant when they are not ready or able to have children, it can reduce the need for abortion.)

Emergency contraceptive pills or the IUD as emergency contraception work before pregnancy begins. According to leading medical authorities – such as the National Institutes of Health and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists – pregnancy begins when the fertilized egg implants in the lining of a woman's uterus. Implantation begins five to seven days after sperm fertilizes the egg, and the process is completed several days later. Emergency contraception will not work if a woman is already pregnant, and it also will not harm the woman or her fetus.

• How are emergency contraceptive pills different from the abortion pill ?
  

The abortion pill (also known as mifepristone or RU-486), is a completely different drug from Plan B and the other brands of birth control pills that you can use for emergency contraception. Emergency contraceptive pills contain common female hormones, either progestin alone or progestin combined with estrogen. These hormones prevent pregnancy, they do not cause an abortion.

Mifepristone, which is sold in the United States under the brand name Mifeprex, belongs to a new class of drugs known as antiprogestins, which stop the development of a pregnancy once it has started (which happens once a fertilized egg implants in the uterus). This drug is approved for use in early abortions in the United States, and many other countries. At a far lower dose, mifepristone has been shown to also be effective for preventing pregnancy, like emergency contraceptive pills, but it is only available for this use in China.

If the EC pill does not work, can the hormones of the pill cause harm to the baby?

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